None other than Mr Anna Hazare declared, in writing, that Team Anna
stands dissolved. After an eventful year
in which it captured the eyeballs (if not the imagination) of the entire
nation, it was indeed a feeble end for the brand, Team Anna. It is now clear that while the latest fast
unto death ended with an announcement of forming a new political party and
clarion calls for ‘total revolution’, whatever formation that will eventually
come out of it will not be the same or continuation of the Team Anna.
One may agree or disagree with the demands and/ or methods of Team
Anna. But no one can deny the role played by them for more than a year. Team Anna succeeded in attracting a sizeable
number of people from at least the urban middle class. Not many ‘apolitical’ movements can claim
that in post-independent India.
There are always lessons to be learned from such movements irrespective
of their success or failure. What are the major lessons from this Movement? To
my mind they are as follows:
How not to conduct negotiations?
Team Anna was in a unique position to create history. For the first time, the Government officially
engaged a civil society group, at the very highest level, in drafting
legislation. While many NGOs and
Institutions have played stellar roles in drafting various Bills in the past,
their involvement was more of advisory than participatory. However, Team Anna could not hold on to this
unique position because they lacked the basic negotiation skills.
Any negotiation, to be successful, must be conducted for win-win, in a
spirit of give and take. Holding on to
maximalist positions will not take us anywhere. ‘My Way or Highway’ will only
get us on the highway to nowhere!
Team Anna instead of reaching a mutually acceptable midway position
with Government, decided to play hardball and stick to their own version of
Janlokpal in spite of serious reservations about some of its provisions. It was juvenile to expect the Parliament and
Government to surrender all their will to a group of individuals on such a
serious policy change. Also, in any
case, it would have made much more sense to make a beginning by adopting a
mutually acceptable solution and then continue to seek improvements, if
necessary, after closely watching the efficacy of that solution.
The rules of public discourse
Not just in negotiations, even in conducting public discourse on the
subject, Team Anna failed to maintain basic decorum. Even elements of government were guilty on
this count. Often, the representatives
of both sides resorted to discrediting the other side than engaging them on the
strength of logical arguments. This is the result of larger than life egos
coming to play, overtaking the very objective of the discourse! In the process,
any chance for converting more people towards their own cause was also lost.
Let me just quote the three rules prescribed by Buddha for maintaining
harmony in a group while conducting interactions:
- Use only words that contribute to harmony, avoid all words that can
cause the community to break
- Share insights and understanding together
- Respect other’s view points and don’t force another to follow your
own view point
(as quoted in ‘Old Path White Clouds’ by Thich Nhat Hanh)
These principles are self-explanatory and readers might remember how
the negative comments and personal attacks in public vitiated the very
atmosphere of the interactions.
Efficacy of Satyagraha
I have come across comments that show the failure of Team Anna as a
proof for the uselessness of Gandhian Satyagraha and Non-violence as means in
fighting for justice! This cannot be far
from truth. Let us call a spade a spade! Team Anna tactics were only a very
poor and thinly disguised imitation of Gandhian methods. The failure of such a poor imitation is not a
proof for the inefficacy of the original.
The members of Team Anna or even Mr Anna himself are not votaries of
non-violence or Satyagraha in any sense.
They only used the fast-unto-death as a means to put pressure (you may
even call it blackmail) on the government.
Gandhi’s Satyagraha was always inward looking- a kind of self
purification through which he appealed to the moral principles of the
opponents. Anna’s methods were always
outward looking- in which he projected all the evils on to the politicians per
se and ruling party in particular. Not
once, Anna insisted that his followers must desist from being party to
corruption in any manner. Despite the occasional ceremony of oath taking etc,
the emphasis was always on the government and the politicians rather than the
people. They always maintained that 120
crore population of India was with them in the fight against corruption. Then
who was indulging in corruption? Some
aliens? That is one question they left unanswered.
If at all, Team Anna movement has only reiterated the efficacy of
non-violence ans Satyagraha. They almost managed to achieve what Naxals and
various fringe groups could not achieve after so much of violence. It was only
their lack of conviction in the non-violence (remember calls for targeting
MPs’/Ministers’ homes etc?) and use of methods that were clearly out of the
purview of Satyagraha that called their bluff, eventually leading to loss of
all public support.
Primacy of Democracy
The Team’s decision to engage in political process reiterated the
primacy of democracy. In a democracy,
the people (and not the so called public opinions manufactured through in house
referendums) must have the right to decide on who (and how) should govern
them. Howsoever valid one’s ideas may
be, one has no right to enforce it upon others until one has succeeded in
converting that idea into the opinion of genuine majority.
No democratic government can go against a true majority opinion. If
they do so, they will perish at the very next election. In India, whatever elections that took place
recently have clearly shown that majority of people is yet to consider
corruption as a political issue. No
political dispensation has suffered in India on account of their corrupt
image. That is why government is not
concerned about Lokpal as an issue. This
is true even for the state governments.
Two states that are required to go for elections in near future and are
governed by a party (BJP) other than the ruling party at the Centre, namely,
Gujarat and Karnataka, have failed to even appoint Lokayuktas. This clearly demonstrates that across
political spectrum, the anti-corruption mood is not seen as of any consequence.
Dilution of the objectives
In a movement like India against Corruption, people join on the basis
of a specific objective. The
participants might be ideologically poles apart yet agree to work together for
the same objective. It was incorrect to
believe that all the people who visited Team Anna’s agitation sites were
otherwise apolitical or against the current political system. A large majority of them might surely have
been followers of some or other political party and yet joined the Movement
because they wanted to fight corruption.
It is imperative for survival of such movements that the Movement
retain its focus on the single objective. Team Anna went far beyond that. Their latest fast-unto-death was also for
reasons other than Lokpal. They wanted a
Special Investigation Team to be constituted to investigate corruption charges
against as many as 15 Ministers of the Central Government (that too without
even filing an FIR or a complaint before any court). Lot of people saw this as diluting the
original objective and adopting a more anti-Congress stand. More so, because their demands did not find
mention of some of the very high profile corruption charges against the members
of the opposition parties!
To come back to our proposition, such dilution of the objective and
partisan approaches make the people to reconsider their affiliations and
priorities. When Team Anna went against
UPA ministers personally, it lost many followers. When it refused to acknowledge the role of
Sangh constituents and attacked Narendra Modi in public, the Sangh followers
(who constituted maximum percentage of vocal followers of Team Anna as their
anti UPA position converged with that the latter’s stand) too left, leaving
Team Anna with little choice but to call off the agitation.
What went wrong?
Team Anna came to the scene as an apolitical group that is interested
in the cleaning up of our society. They
should have done some basic research in the nature of corruption in our
society. That would have shown them that corruption is not limited to the
higher echelons of the polity alone. It
is all pervasive and each of us indulges in it in some form or other. They should have understood that we as
members of the society cannot out source our responsibilities to any agency, be
it Lokpal or Janlokpal.
Corruption cannot be defeated if we accept the maxim that “bribes are
not corruption but compulsions”. A bribe
is a bribe and it is corruption, even if it is made to the doctor in the
operation theatre of a government hospital. Bribe taker and bribe giver
are both guilty of the crime of corruption; no matter how one tries to
rationalise it. What compulsion is that makes us to enter inside a
reservation compartment of a train and seek out the ticket checker to bribe him
for getting a berth? If we sleep in an unreserved compartment for a
night, would that make such a compulsive difference?
Lokpal or Jan Lokpal; we will continue bribing and indulging in
corruption to ensure small comforts to us and our family. When we are
willing to pay, the government officials will be tempted to take the bribes,
even if they are scared of being caught; again to ensure little comforts of
their families. So long as both the giver and the taker continue the
collusion, no Lokpal can catch the culprits. Instead, the Lokpal
officials using their quasi-judicial powers might also end up harassing the
officials as well as public and thereby creating further avenues for
corruption!
I do not believe that Lokpal or Jan Lokpal will offer a panacea for us,
removing overnight all the bad things in public life. Laws and
institutions can only act when we are willing to stand up. Unless we
fight the demands and instead of succumbing, file complaints against such
illegal demands and provide evidence in trials, no institution can fight
corruption. Similarly, we as a society
must also stop our habit of respecting the rich, no matter what their source of
richness is! Ill gotten money should not
get respect or support from society.
Only then the corruption can be tackled.
For a short time, it was easy to convince people who were incensed with
the large scale scams being reported.
However, as the time progressed, people became more and more aware of
the realities of the proposals. More
people understood that Lokpal will not save from the transactional corruptions
that they face in their day today life!
Do not underestimate your
Government
Never underestimate a government or its Ministers or its resolve. One may agree with them or not, but
considering the government as weak institution and yourself as so powerful will
only lead to results like the present one! You may love or hate your ministers
and leaders; but do not underestimate them. Most of them are really
capable and much smarter than us... the very fact that they have reached those
positions and have managed to retain those positions proves that fact.
Same applies for the bureaucrats. Each one has gone through the daily
grind of the public administration and has gained enough experience in dealing
with every type of crisis. To expect them to give-in without any fight was
really naive.
India is not a monolithic
country
Many supporters of Anna thought the movement and the fasts were India's jasmine revolution moments. However, they forgot the fact that India does not think alike, behave alike or have same priorities.
Unlike smaller countries which are easily susceptible to revolutions by people,
it is not feasible to conduct a revolution in India. It is too diverse for its
people to come together on any issue. The closest people came to such an
understanding was under Jayaprakash Narain, post emergency, yet the response
was not uniform across India.
The television shows, Twitter debates and Facebook campaigns do not
show the entire India, though these media can easily make one fall prey for
delusions of public opinion. When it comes to the real decisions, the silent
majority from the various diverse groups react as per their own wisdom and
logic. The very diversity and size are
the greatest insurance for survival of India and its political systems!
What should have been the way?
Team Anna, being the ‘apolitical civil society’ should have recognised
these simple facts and decided to educate people on the drawbacks of indulging
in corruption. They should have appealed
to the moral, rather than political side of human beings, to change the way we
look at things. They were not under any
pressure to achieve immediate results. They had the support of many
enthusiastic youth, willing to work hard.
They should have panned out all across the country and increased the
awareness among people about rights and duties and also the necessary values
and virtues of social life.
But the members of Team Anna were clearly impatient. They couldn’t even
wait till next elections. They wanted to dethrone the current government at any
cost; as if on orders from someone else!
Members had their personal agendas to cater to. Such a game could not be sustained for long;
and the results are for all of us to see.
Conclusion
I do welcome Team Anna’s decision to become part of the political
process, because that is the only way to force an ideology or view point in a
democracy, unless you are willing to reason and convince the majority to accept
your views. However, I am not very optimistic about their success, as I do believe
that there are too many inter se contradictions among the group that will pull
it down at all stages.
I have consciously desisted from commenting on the personal aspects of
the members or strategic aspect of the Movement. However, there might be many
more useful lessons from the Movement that I have failed to notice or record
above. Readers are welcome to add their
own lessons by way of comments. Hopefully,
various lessons from the success and the failure of Team Anna will serve the
future Movements for similar objectives.
